Transport on Bolshaya Balakhnya River towards base camp 3. Photo: Per Möller

Our marine sediments dug out in a stair-case manner. A lot of sediment to remove from steep river bluffs. Photo: Per Möller

It has been a week with hard work, in many aspects. And re-planning – a necessity in Arctic expeditions as everything not always turn out as expected.

Last Monday we made our move to base camp 3, 42 km downstream in straight line. Fourteen hours after start, at 2 o’clock in the night, we arrived, in reality a cruise down the meandering river of 115 km! It was north to south, and south to north in the large meanders. After some 3–5 km following a meander sling we had often only transported our self around a kilometre further towards our final destination. A bit tiresome, but the good weather helped and the late evening and night was beautiful with midnight clouds mirroring themselves in calm waters and the landscape glowing in warm colours.

We spotted our first reindeer, a large bull with fantastic antlers projected towards the sky when he was watching us from the river bluff. Reindeers are usually abundant on Taymyr, often in herd of hundreds to thousands. However, in mid summer they are usually further to the north than we are, by that being less affected by the clouds of mosquitoes. Unfortunately, we are not that happy as these small creatures sometimes drive us into close madness.

Buzzard chicks in their nest above our diggings. Photo: Per Möller

After setting up camp we hit the sack at around 5 in the morning and turned up for a very late breakfast in the afternoon. This unforeseen long boat journey (bad planning from my part), and the fact that the engines “drink” much more petrol than calculated for, heavily loaded as they are, put us in a logistic dilemma; it left us with gasoline for our boat engines for only some further 50 km, not enough to take us to the next base camp and planned refuelling at around the 30th of July. So, you have to be flexible. At planned refuelling some of us were scheduled for a two-day helicopter ride for sampling boulders for cosmogenic nuclide dating of the large moraine ridge systems, marking the former positions of retreating ice sheets. I managed to re-schedule these flights to this week, and by that also made it possible to fly in 700 litres of badly needed gasoline, at no extra cost. A helicopter was available on Thursday last week.

Dima with new-caught shir. Photo: Per Möller

In the mean time we made good science in available geologic sections, digging out, describing and sampling marine sediments, organic sediments with mega-fauna remains, and ice wedges penetrating these sediments. A large number of cores were drilled in ice wedges and permafrost for later isotope and DNA studies. However, the work digging marine sediments out in a staircase manner on a 20 m high river bluff was not very much appreciated from the “natives”, a falcon pair nesting 100 metres to the right and a pair of buzzards (fjällvråk in Swedish) with a nest hosting three quite large chickens 100 metres to the left were screaming at us for the whole first day. The day thereafter we were, however, kind of accepted. Our fishing nets have also been more loaded than at previous base camps; we have caught a number quite large shir that make excellent food, both as fried, boiled or salted.

So, last Thursday the helicopter came with the expected fuel; we took 300 litres here in our present camp, and then put the rest in a depot downstream waiting for us for later use. And Dima, Ivar and myself boarded the helicopter for our search for boulders on the before mentioned moraine ridges. The approximate route was discussed and confirmed beforehand with the pilots, but there is then some stress into it, sitting behind the pilots and the engineer, trying to follow the flight route on the map, correcting directions (with pilots that only speak a few word in English), and at the same time scouting for boulders at the size of one or two meters in diameter at a speed of 150 km an hour and at a height of 100 meters. Once a boulder was spotted, you have to be quick about it, land or not? A landing draws some 200 l of fuel, and the capacity of landing is only 6–8 per day, if not to be stranded on the tundra.

Helicopter navigation.

Sampling the boulders turned out to be a quite strenuous and dirty work. At all locations the helicopter could not land directly on the spot, meaning carrying the heavy sampling equipment, including cooling water, over the wet tundra up to a few hundreds of metres. We used a new sampling technique – at least for me – in using an angle grinder that cut rock as it was butter. But what a mess it did to our field clothes with sprouting rock flour in the cooling water! With the angle grinder we sawed the boulder surfaces in a chess patterns, taking out rock cubes with a total weight per sample between 1–2 kg.

These samples will later be analysed in different laboratories for their content of the cosmogenic isotope beryllium. As there is a constant inflow from outer space of this isotope to the surface of Earth, and that this isotope accumulates in the upper part of rock surfaces, the content is time-dependent and can thus be used as a dating method for, e.g., boulders put down by former ice sheets, and then also be used as a dating tool for boulder-bestrewn moraine ridges formed at retreating margins of those glaciers.

Cutting work completed. Photo: Per Möller

Late Thursday night after a full day in the Mi8 helicopter, we arrived in Khatanga for an overnight stay. Our “man in Khatanga” took us out for a late dinner, to a restaurant of a kind I did not think existed in a place like this; we were met by chic waitresses in mini-skirts and the restaurant was nicely decorated. However, the Russian disco music was so loud that it prevented any possible conversation but was apparently liked by the little more than teenager Russian girls dancing frenetically (the men seemed to prefer drinking). The whole situation was a bit bizarre! But the food was good, and I think I saw the nicest looking toilets east of the Urals!

The helicopter flight for sampling continued Friday morning and in total we covered some 600 kilometres each day during c. 10 hours of effective flight time. The sampling went very well; but the results we will have to wait for and see if these match the substantial sum of money set aside for sampling and later dating costs.

Ivar cutting boulders with our angle grinder. Photo: Per Möller

For Sunday it was planned to continue downstream to base camp 4. However, the nice weather on Saturday evening, promising good weather also the next day failed us. During the night a low pressure came in, with heavy rain and strong winds. At 8 pm I blew this operation off. Packing down the camp in such weather, and then 10 hours in the zodiacs, would not be so nice. So, we celebrated Sunday by sleeping and/or reading the rain of, and then in the evening the Russian Navy Day had to be celebrated, meaning a ride on the river with the Navy Flag in the stern and shooting of some flares. And of course some vodka at dinner! We move tomorrow…

Per Möller, Department of Geology, Lund University